Mountain Hardwear SkyLedge 2.1 Tent
August 16, 2008
I’m one of those idiots who thinks that taking a brand new piece of gear out in the field before even taking the tags off is a great way to test it. Sometimes that’s not the greatest idea and I’m left struggling with a water filter with no directions, finding out that my backpack has a broken zipper, or discovering that, say, the sleeping bag on which I am relying on for survival should be rated +85 degrees instead of -20. This time, though, I got lucky and was pleasantly relieved to find that the Skyledge 2.1 is fairly intuitive to set up and had all its pieces (whew).
Designed for ultralight backpacking, the Skyledge flirts with the 4 lb. mark, perfect for lazy people who don’t like to carry heavy things. One of the reasons it’s so light, though, is that it’s not roomy at all. If you’re using this for two people, the two people really better like each other a lot. I think Mountain Hardwear anticipated this, because the Skyledge has two side doors, each with its own roomy vestibule. That will go a long way towards promoting the sanity factor on tentbound days. Aside from those luxuries, this is a fairly minimal sleep center, without bells and whistles. Still, I’d personally rather not have to carry bells and whistles, so that all works out well. The tent itself, as you can see from the picture, is mostly mesh, so this is probably not the best cold-weather tent out there, but at least you won’t get a lot of condensation.
One absolutely awesome feature is the windows in the tent fly. I’ve always thought it was dumb to have a great tent made of mesh so you can see out, but then cover it up with an opaque tent fly. What’s the point of that? MHW made up for this by providing nifty see through panels in the fly. So when you’re stuck in the Skyledge, with the two vestibules providing the only buffer zone between you and annoyance sufficient to justify strangling your tentmate, you can always gaze out the window (probably at whatever weather is forcing you to stay in there) and think happy thoughts rather than focusing on the annoying way your tentmate is sipping her hot chocolate (okay, it’s been in that cup an hour and a half, do you REALLY think it’s still so hot that you can’t drink it without slurping????).
I don’t know how to spin this to make it women-specific, so how about this: the lack of color coding on the poles means it’s designed for people who might possibly be inclined to read the directions (hint: not men). But it’s so easy to set up that color coding is really not necessary, so that’s kind of moot. So let’s try: the color is described as “wasabi” rather than “green” which might appeal to a woman’s more nuanced sense of description. How’s that?
